Denmark has stolen children from their foreigner parents

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Danish employment model put to test

Dennis Harmon lost his job, but that doesn't mean he'll lose his livelihood.

The veteran bricklayer is entitled to the maximum jobless benefits in Denmark: $594 a week. After taxes, that's enough to cover rent for his two-room apartment outside Copenhagen, utilities and payments on his 1996 Opel Vectra.

"There's not much left for fun," mutters Harmon, a 40-year-old Dane whose surname is tattooed on his right forearm.

Even so, Harmon receives a level of compensation that people losing their jobs in many parts of the world can only dream of.

Robust unemployment compensation is a key feature of Denmark's labor market model, studied so widely in recent years that it rivals Carlsberg beer and Lego toys among the Scandinavian nation's most famous trademarks.

Called "flexicurity," it combines flexibility for employers to hire and fire workers with financial security for the unemployed. And experts say it helps explain why both Danish businesses and workers are entering the global downturn in better shape than most of their Western peers.

"People here are not worried about losing their jobs to the extent that they are in the U.S.," says Torben Andersen, an economist at the University of Aarhus, western Denmark. "If people get unemployed, it doesn't mean they will have to sell their house. They know the unemployment coverage is there."

Read the full article at Yahoo News

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Danish PM aims to meet Dalai Lama

Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen hopes to meet Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in May when he visits Denmark, despite Chinese warnings, a parliamentary source said Thursday.

“I met with the Dalai Lama during his last visit to Denmark in 2003 and I plan to do so again if possible,” Rasmussen wrote in response to a question from opposition Socialist People’s Party member Pernille Frahm, who passed on his answer to AFP.

Frahm said she had written to the prime minister to ask if he “planned to defy warnings from the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and meet with the Dalai Lama in May.”

The 73-year-old exiled spiritual leader has visited Denmark several times, each time provoking loud protests from China, which has ruled Tibet since 1951.

His next visit to the Scandinavian country is scheduled for 29-31 May.

Source: Tibet Sun

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Denmark fears of ethnic riots

MS-NBC published a report on the gang wars. Politiken reports on the government's anti-gang package, which includes deportation of criminal immigrants. The shootings have meanwhile forced the closure of a library, culture center and sports hall on Blågårdsgade (Blågård street), and stopped deliveries by a meal-on-wheels company (see here and here).

Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende reports that Copenhagen is on its way to becoming an American city. A survey of 1,016 residents conducts by Gallup shows that 60% of the residents say that there are places in the city where they wouldn't go. 48% of the women changed their behavior due to the gang-war.

Hanne-Vibeke Holst, who wrote about women and power and had gotten threats from both Muslim fundamentalist and right-wing groups, says that she's worried about the situation. The gang-war is an expression of an extreme, destructive patriarchal culture - where honor plays a role, with a violence spiral of revenge and counter-revenge, of protecting one's honor and not 'losing face'. It's a problem in all of society, she says, but certainly also a problem in Muslim cultures. But even normal Danes live in a culture where violence is the solution and is glamorized, as can be seen from Hollywood films and computer games.

More: Islam in Europe

Monday, March 09, 2009

Anders for NATO

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, appears set to become the new secretary-general of Nato, following a private agreement by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany to back his candidacy. More: Financial Times

Who will take his place as prime minister of Danish Government? Maybe, Pia K.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

More than 200 Danes losing jobs every day

The latest government employment figures released for January show that an average of 238 people lost their jobs in Denmark each day during the month. This brings to total number of unemployed Danes to more than 64,000 people.

Industry experts are warning that local Danish councils are going to have their hands full dealing with the ensuing job crisis as unemployment numbers continue to rise, Politiken reports.

“I’m worried that councils may not be able to handle the increasing unemployment up to August 1,” says DI Labour Market Head Mette Rose Skaksen, adding that council experience with similar situations in the past was not good. It’s the local councils who are responsible for finding new jobs for unemployed Danes.

Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the Minister for Labour, told Politiken the Danish government is taking the situation very seriously and has already proposed tax reforms aimed to jump-start the economy.

“The government has been taking the necessary, responsible steps and will continue to do so. Luckily we saved up when times were good so we have something to act with, now that the international financial crisis is affecting Denmark,” Frederiksen says.

Source: Ice News

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Denmark Doesn't Believe in God

[...] Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people’s lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out.
It is also well known that in various rankings of nations by life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness, Denmark and Sweden stand in the first tier.
Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.”
Which is why he insists at some length that what he and his wife and children experienced was quite the opposite: “a society — a markedly irreligious society — that was, above all, moral, stable, humane and deeply good.” [...]
Though they denied most of the traditional teachings of Christianity, they called themselves Christians, and most were content to remain in the Danish National Church or the Church of Sweden, the traditional national branches of Lutheranism.
At the same time, they were “often disinclined or hesitant to talk with me about religion, and even once they agreed to do so, they usually had very little to say on the matter.” [...]
“I really have never thought about that,” one of his interviewees answered, adding, “It’s been fun to get these kinds of questions that I never, never think about.”
This indifference or obliviousness to religious matters was sometimes subtly enforced. “In Denmark,” a pastor told “the word ‘God’ is one of the most embarrassing words you can say. You would rather go naked through the city than talk about God.”
One man recounted the shock he felt when a colleague, after a few drinks, confessed to believing in God. “I hope you don’t feel I’m a bad person,” the colleague pleaded. [...]

More at The New York Times